


to swallow forgiveness

by emollience



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Guilt, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Season/Series 04, Prophetic Dreams, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22229530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emollience/pseuds/emollience
Summary: “I’m not asking you to trust me. I don’t expect you to,” she says. “But this isn’t about you and me anymore.”“It never has been,” Adora replies.
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora & Bow (She-Ra), Adora & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow & Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Scorpia (She-Ra), Perfuma/Scorpia (She-Ra)
Comments: 82
Kudos: 454





	1. mindfulness

**Author's Note:**

> you ever set out to write a oneshot and next thing you know you have a short outline + a real plot and realize that it would be ridiculous to fit like 30k into a oneshot

i wonder, when will god reach down and pray for my forgiveness?    
i tried, for a while, to live under mercy's roof  
to rid myself of a choleric heart  
i tried, for a while, to swallow forgiveness  
like i swallow  
anguish

THE FOOL SAYS, Ashley Miranda 

when i imagine myself  
i am always leaving  
i couldn't draw my own face if god asked    
  


THE VAULT, Andrés Cerpa 

  
  
  


Adora goes to Mystacor, after.

“Maybe Castaspella will be able to bring She-Ra back,” she tells Bow, though she already knows the inevitable outcome. Still, she sheaths an ordinary sword and straps it to her back. Castle Bright Moon rests well protected with half the Sorcerers Guild standing guard and the remnants of the Princess Alliance returned from the final battle. They have little need of her.

And so she leaves with nothing more than the sword on her back and Swift Wind’s silent encouragement. The journey is short, even as they fly close to the ground. Horde Prime’s ships have yet to point weapons their way, instead just lingering up in the sky, an ominous forewarning. She’s not one to tempt fate, let alone the enemy.

Mystacor is as it always was: a quiet beacon; a reprieve in a war-torn planet. Castaspella frets over Adora the second she and Swift Wind arrive, rambling on and on about location spells to find Glimmer, the knots in Adora’s now loose hair, where to put Swift Wind, the return of her brother. Adora tries to follow, but finds she can’t, her head, her limbs, everything muddled and heavy.

“Oh, but you must be tired, dear,” says Casta. She rests a hand at the top of Adora’s head. They stop at the guest wing, right by the door of the room Adora stayed in last visit. “Please, sleep. We have much to do in the morning.”

“The moon’s barely set,” replies Adora. “It’s too early.”

“Time is meaningless. You’re dragging your feet.” Casta scowls. “I insist. You’ll get nothing done in the state you’re in.”

“But —”

“Adora,” she says, voice soft. “When was the last time you rested? Truly rested?”

She finds no answer — at least none that she can voice out loud. The phantom pain of a childhood long gone pulses bright and hot right at the very center of her chest, spreading and blooming along the scars splicing her back, her left cheek.

She goes to bed.

  
  
  
  


“There is still magic within you,” Casta tells her in the morning. They sit in her office, the interior as frantic as Casta herself, littered with trinkets and gadgets and lengths of books along the walls. Now, she holds Adora’s hand, fingers tracing the lines on Adora’s palm. “It’s thrumming right beneath the surface. You can’t feel it?”

Adora shakes her head. “I haven’t felt anything since the sword broke.”

“The sword was a conduit. Nothing more. It was not you, Adora.”

“I’m useless without it,” she admits. “I can’t save Glimmer, or protect Etheria. I can’t do anything.”

“That’s silly. You lived an entire lifetime without the sword, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah —”

“Then you can live another without it.” Casta lets go of Adora’s hand. “It was a crutch. If anything, it held your magical ability back. You require training. That’s all.”

“Really?” she asks, her voice smaller than she’s ever heard, and then flinches. Training she can do. Training is all she’s ever known.

“Yes, but…” Casta tapers off. She considers Adora with a tilt of the head. “It will be difficult. You’re blocked from accessing your own power and it will take time to even unravel it all.”

“I…I don’t have time. Glimmer’s still with Horde Prime, and we need to stop this invasion —”

“I’m aware.” With a grace Adora can never hope to emulate, Casta rises from her seat and begins to pull out large leather tomes from her shelves. “There is little we can do now, however. I’m afraid that this time around it will be much more than fighting.”

“I don’t understand,” says Adora.

“It brings me no pleasure to say that you will,” she replies.

  
  
  
  


Casta sends Adora off to meditate. She claims it’ll help to clear her head. “All the magic’s blocked off by you,” she punctuates with a poke to the tip of Adora’s nose.

She sits still and tries to let every thought pass by like the clouds above her head. That’s what Bow told her, once, while they traveled without Glimmer. He said it kept him grounded. He said he acknowledged whatever he felt, good or bad, and imagined every thought to be nothing more than a cloud floating overhead or a leaf fluttering from a tree branch onto a lazily streaming river. It exists and it goes away.

She tries, really, she does, but up above where the clouds should roll past hang ships puncturing the sky. Up above hides Glimmer, gone to them all. Adora had promised Angella to keep her safe, and instead she drove her daughter right into Light Hope’s arms and then up a beam to Horde Prime. She remembers Bow ripping his hand from Glimmer’s grip, the way the open vulnerability on her face shuttered and closed as she stepped back and steeled her shoulders, the way she hardened as she said, “But I am your queen.” She remembers the way her chest tightened, even as she began to plan how to leave without Glimmer’s notice.

All Adora ever wanted was to keep people safe. She doesn’t know when she became an expert in breaking promises instead.

“Adora,” says Casta, and there are hands gently shaking her shoulders. She opens her eyes to the warmth of Casta’s brown eyes, her brows furrowed. “I could all but hear your turmoil across the palace. Meditation is supposed to be relaxing, y’know.”

“Oh,” she says. She touches her cheek and finds it wet. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  
  
  


Nothing changes. The world carries on. Adora never thought herself superstitious, always meticulous and analytical before all else, but she finds the quiet ominous above all else.

“Shouldn’t Horde Prime have shot Etheria out of the universe by now?” she tells Casta a week later, tipping her head back, eyes falling on the largest ship above them. “Or at least have contacted us?”

Casta hums. “He has the Queen in his grasp. I’m sure Glimmer is doing her best to keep him at ease.” She shrugs. “Sometimes the best you can do is wait.”

“We should be trying to get her back. Don’t you want her here?”

“Of course I do.” Casta fixes her eyes on Adora, forcing Adora to look away, cheeks burning. “I’m in contact with the Guild back in Bright Moon. They’re working with Bow and the other princesses to send a transmission to get in contact with Horde Prime.”

“I didn’t know,” she admits.

“I didn’t tell you,” says Casta. “You already have so much to worry about. I didn’t realize this could ease your worries. But Adora,” and here Casta frowns at her, considering her with a tilt of the head, “you realize you are doing all you can, right?”

Adora turns back to the meditation grounds, the students and sorcerers carrying on with their duties and studies. Despite the ships haunting them like a knell, they continue.

“I can always do better,” she answers.

  
  
  
  


As a child, she navigated the labyrinth of green-lit halls with her hand in Catra’s. It was the only constant, even as their limbs stretched and grew; even as their classes increased in difficulty; even as Shadow Weaver did her best to rip apart their grip. No room for luxuries like friendship. No room for romance, either.

But: “It’s you and me,” Catra would say, resolute, and Adora never heard anything better. It was wet smacks of the lips against pudgy cheeks at first, and then, as they grew older, a mouth slanted against Adora’s, a hand gripping the nape of her neck.

She thinks of Catra and she wonders at the constant ache despite the claws scraping her back. Despite the corrupted jewel pressed to her sword. Despite the smirk thrown her way as Catra pulled the switch. Despite the Force Captain badge falling into the chasm between them and the final dejected look Catra leveled her way before letting go.

Her feelings for Catra tangle and knot, even after all this time, suspended into the chasm no longer splitting the Whispering Woods. Catra is a festering wound within her she will never try to heal.

“You’re angry,” Casta says one morning, eyes fixed on the pale fingers gripping the fabric at Adora’s knees.

“Of course I am.” She wipes at her eyes, surprised at the rush of burning tears. “I don’t know how to be anything else,” she admits.

  
  
  
  


The weeks pass slow. When she hears from Bow he tries his best to grin and spin even the worst of news to the brightest light, except Adora catches the minute drop in expression, the faintest downward twitch of his mouth when he thinks she won’t notice.

“Entrapta, Micah, and I are still trying, but Horde Prime’s system is completely impenetrable. It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before.” He forces a smile. “Entrapta’s enjoying the challenge.”

Adora snorts. “At least one of us is having a good time. Is Micah healing up okay?”

“Yeah, he’s still got a bit of a limp, but he’s doing fine now. Scorpia’s been playing nurse maid a bit, actually.” At Adora’s raised brow, Bow chuckles. “She spends a lot of time in the infirmary with Perfuma, so she’s learning a lot about natural remedies. Who would’ve thought the big scary Force Captain loves to nurse people?”

Adora doesn’t say anything for a beat. She sits in the guest room assigned to her, the one with bare walls and plain pink sheets, the one that will never feel like home as much as her room in Bright Moon or the cadet barracks in the Fright Zone did. She swallows back the resentment Scorpia always dredges up and says, “So…everyone’s getting along then?”

Bow nods. “It’s been nice. Everyone misses you, though.” He stops. “You can come back whenever you’d like, Adora.”

“I know,” she manages despite the lump in her throat. She blinks back the burn of tears. “I haven’t been able to get She-Ra back. Casta’s been helping me, but apparently I’m blocking my magic? I don’t know. I don’t really understand.”

Bow looks at her as if he means to reach out and lay a hand on her shoulder. His eyes are wide, earnest. “I miss you, Adora,” he says. “Not She-Ra.’

  
  
  


Imagine her surprise when her tablet lights up days later and it’s Scorpia, not Bow, on the other end. She smiles up at Adora, oblivious to the scowl tugging at her mouth.

“You’ll never believe it,” she starts without so much as a greeting, like they’re friends. Adora tries and fails to keep her eyes from narrowing. “Glimmer got in contact with us this morning —”

“What?” Adora leans close to the screen. “Where is she? Is she coming back?”

Scorpia nods, grinning. “Soon, she said. And you’ll never believe who was with her!” Before Adora can even open her mouth Scorpia blurts out: “Catra!”

Adora blinks once, twice. Catra and Glimmer with one another, two phases of her life that should never slot together. “What?”

“Apparently when Glimmer got pulled up to Horde Prime’s ship Catra did too. She’s been helping Glimmer negotiate with him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s on our side, Adora,” says Scorpia, like it means something. “She’s with us,” she repeats, this time softer. She watches Adora carefully. Adora wishes she could look away, but finds herself frozen.

Adora can’t will herself to speak; doesn’t know how to reconcile the relief at knowing both Glimmer and Catra’s safety and the skepticism at Catra’s turn of loyalties. She wants to protest. She wants to prod at Scorpia, insist that Catra’s only out for herself, that she’s biding her time, dissecting what is and isn’t best for her and only her.

She wishes she didn’t think so.

“You should come back,” says Scorpia after the lengthy silence. “They’ll be here in a day. You should be here.”

Adora’s throat tightens. “I — I can’t,” she says. She shakes her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t —”

“But —”

“I haven’t brought She-Ra back,” bubbles out of her, and she can’t stop, her heart’s hammering in her chest and she can’t stop, “and I can’t go back, not yet, not when…” she tapers off. She forces her mouth shut and stares away from the screen, from Scorpia’s concerned stare. “I have to go.”

“Adora —”

She hangs up. She lets the tablet drop back to the bed. In the quiet aftermath, she falls to her knees and cradles her head in her hands, unable to quell the panic set deep in her bones.

  
  
  


With Casta gone for Bright Moon Adora finds herself at a loss. She tries to meditate and hardly succeeds, never able to hold herself still. She tries to read, only to fall asleep over the ancient tomes. She trains, and trains till her muscles ache and she can hardly move. She sleeps early and wakes even earlier. She sleeps and she wakes and she trains and she misses the steady hum of power that once rested sure in her hands.

In the mornings she checks her tablet to find missed calls from Bow as well as a steady stream of messages. He asks her to come back and she still can’t will herself to.

His latest messages detail that as of now Etheria is subject to Horde Prime’s rule, yet another mark on the map of his unending empire. Catra convinced him of Etheria’s worth, sparing the planet from untimely destruction. She is now Glimmer’s Senior Advisor.

Adora’s stomach turns. She sets down the tablet and packs her bag. After leaving a note for Casta at her study desk, Swift Wind comes for Adora in the courtyard and they take off together to the Crystal Castle.

“Feels…off,” he tells her. He tilts his head up, eyes narrowed. “Kinda haunted.”

“I know. But maybe Light Hope…” she trails off. She touches the door, fingers tracing the First Ones’ writing engraved deep in the stone. “There has to be something left, right?”

The door does not open. She breathes Eternia’s name. She calls for Light Hope. She presses her palm flat against the door and wills it to open.

Still, nothing.

She had spent so long training inside those walls. The months of training under Light Hope’s eye line these walls, witness to the frustrated yells and kicks, the lack of answers on the hologram’s part. If only she could phase through, turn back time to revert Light Hope to what she was during Mara’s time. 

Adora thinks it must be some kind of punishment to be severed from her power like this. Like losing a limb at the chopping block. The First Ones created the sword to control She-Ra. She-Ra is not the sword, nor is Adora. She-Ra is a part of her, isn’t she? So why won’t she come back? Why is she silent?

“Adora,” Swifty says. He nudges her with his muzzle. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t understand why I can’t bring her back.”

He nuzzles her. “That doesn’t matter right now,” he tells her, his nose warm against her cheek. “Let’s just get you back.”

  
  
  
  


Adora returns to Mystacor. She all but crawls back into bed when the second moon has barely set and wakes well into the night. No point in wasting the hours before dawn and so she rises to try her hand at meditation again. 

The meditation grounds are silent and bare. It can’t be later than five in the morning, everyone dozed off in their respective rooms. She settles on a corner, assumes position, and tries, and tries, and tries to quiet her mind, to sit still and calm. Her fingers tap against her knee. Her leg shakes. 

“You look like you’re about to pop a vein.” The insult in the words are familiar, though they lack the typical sting. 

Adora’s eyes snap open. In front of her, arms crossed, stands Catra, except her hair brushes the line of her jaw, the ends blunt and jagged as if she’d taken a knife to the strands. 

Catra waits, far more patient than Adora has ever known her. It doesn’t suit her. Adora doesn’t like it as much as she doesn’t trust it. It strikes her that this is the first time in almost a year that they’ve met face-to-face without immediately lunging to attack. 

“What are you doing here?” asks Adora. 

“Came to get you,” replies Catra. “We need you back at Bright Moon.” 

“Could’ve sent a message.” 

“Bow tried that for how long now? Someone needed to come drag you out of here.” 

Adora snorts. “So they sent _you_? Genius. Real fucking genius.” 

Catra clenches her jaw. Her fingers flex and grip the fabric of her sleeves tight. She did that, Adora thinks. Even after all this time she can do that. 

“Stop wallowing,” Catra says with no bite. She sounds tired. Her face is different: cheeks hollowed, dark bags weighing beneath her eyes. Something sits wrong on her, like she no longer knows how to live in her own skin, like she burdens from a heavy hurt. “Sparkles is about to lose her goddamn mind, Bow’s two seconds away from jumping out a window, and the entire Alliance is a fucking mess. So get over yourself and go back.” 

“I’m flattered, really, that the Queen’s _Senior Advisor_ thinks I’m so necessary.”

Catra’s mouth spreads into a tight, closed-lipped smile. “You said you were done playing my games. I’m not playing yours either, Adora.” 

Adora laughs; can’t stop herself even if she tried to. She pushes herself up to stand, recognizing with a twinge of glee that she towers over Catra, and steps forward. “I’m just supposed to believe that? After everything?” She shoulders past Catra. “I’m done, Catra.” 

Then, just as she reaches the exit: “I know.” 

Adora pauses. Her hands clench into fists at her sides, nails digging deep into her palms. She looks over her shoulder. Catra stares back. 

“I’m not asking you to trust me. I don’t expect you to,” she says. “But this isn’t about you and me anymore.” 

“It never has been,” Adora replies.

Beyond the meditation grounds the clanking and thumps of activity begins, the sorcerers and their student finally up to start the day. She hears the rising sound of children’s laughter and wishes desperately for a time when the noise rose from Catra instead. 

The two of them went so very wrong, Adora finds. Somewhere along the path strewn for them by others with larger plans the two of them went wrong. She wishes she could pinpoint the moment everything fractured. She used to think it was in the field the day she defected, when the plumes of smoke parted and Catra stared back at Adora in grief. She knows now it happened earlier, far earlier than she’ll ever really understand. She wants to lay their history out like a map and point at the exact moment it all began; wants to collect all the unraveling spools of grief and anger and spin it back to the tenderness that they nursed for so long. 

It’s odd to miss the person right in front of you. The recognition doesn’t diminish the ache. 

“Go back to Bright Moon,” Adora says. “Tell the Alliance I’ll return once I’ve brought back She-Ra.” 

  
  
  
  


Mara’s ship fails to activate again. Without the sword the lights don’t even flicker on. Adora presses a button on the console and nothing, again. When Glimmer had first been captured Adora and Bow rushed to the ship, so sure that they could fly up to rescue her, only to find it was reduced back to an empty husk. 

She runs her hand over the smooth panes. She sits at Mara’s seat. It dwarves her. Funny, really, that even with her knowing the truth Adora feels insignificant in the space of Mara’s legacy. 

She left another note for Casta although she had yet to return from Bright Moon. This time Adora won’t return. Meditation has done nothing but prove that she’s wasting her time. There has to be more out there. She-Ra existed before Mara, before the First Ones. Answers exist. She just has to find them. 

“I think I broke her heart,” Bow told Adora. They watched Etheria zoom past through the ship’s screen, Beast Island still a distant point. He stared straight ahead, every line of his body tense. 

Adora scowled. “You did what you had to. She’ll understand eventually.” 

When he looked at her, he looked at her with open and wretched hurt. “Does that make it easier?” he asked. 

He sees her, she realized, and then flushed with shame. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Adora,” he said. “You’re a terrible liar.” 

  
  
  
  



	2. remembrance

The sword shattered. It splintered into pieces in her hands, glittered in the dark abyss of the once functioning Crystal Castle, and Adora stood alone. Its phantom weight settled at her forearm, her back. For once, she felt nothing. 

She left it behind. 

  
  
  
  


She dreams of it often. She dreams of Light Hope flickering blue and lavender, the pitch of her voice changing with every protest and encouragement. She dreams of the cracks splintering the blade of the sword that once meant freedom and startles at the dual glee and grief as she falls to her knees and the shards cascade around her. 

“I am not a weapon,” she repeats, both in her dreams and the trembling aftermath, until she can pretend she believes it. 

When she wakes on the floor of Mara’s old ship, she wakes to a chill where the sword once rested at her back. 

  
  
  
  


“Adora?” George blinks, then blinks again. He steps aside, ushering her in with the wave of a hand, and says, “Is Bow with you? He hasn’t said anything about anyone coming to visit.”

“He’s still in Bright Moon,” she replies. She tucks a lock of hair behind her hair. “I was actually wondering if I could check out a few of your books?” 

His face lights up. “Of course! You kids are always welcome to explore the library. Oh, Lance will be overjoyed. What are you looking for?” 

“Anything you have on She-Ra and the First Ones.” 

“That’s a big part of our collection.” He leads her through the halls and up the stairs. “Is there anything specific you want to search for? Lance and I can help, of course.” 

“Just...Runestones, I guess?” She scratches at the back of her neck. “The history of She-Ra would help too. I’m trying to figure out how runestones actually, y’know, channel magic for the princesses. What would happen if a runestone was permanently destroyed? Would that magic just disappear entirely or does it go somewhere else?” 

“That sounds like something the Sorcerers Guild would know.” 

She sighs. “Yeah.” 

George opens the door to the main library section with a chuckle. “We probably have some information about that here. No worries, Adora. Why don’t you start over where we used to store the runestone fragment. That’s where we keep any information on runestones. You ought to be able to understand the texts better than us considering you actually know the First Ones language.” Then, with a smile: “If you wouldn’t mind, while you’re here, Lance would love to inspect your sword for a bit. He’s been going on for a while about wanting to sketch it and study First Ones’ craftsmanship.” 

She stiffens. Her cheeks burn. “The sword is gone,” she says. She wrings her hands together. “It was destroyed.” 

The smile slides off George’s face. His eyes widen, and Adora watches as he struggles to compose himself. “I’m...I’m sorry to hear that.” He rests a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get Lance. We’ll help however we can, Adora.” 

He offers a final closed-lip smile before walking off, leaving Adora alone, surrounded by the language her people. 

  
  
  
  
  


The earliest writing Lance and George managed to collect dates as far back as three millennia ago. “The writing is extremely faded,” says Lance, holding the scroll with a pair of gloves. “Barely decipherable at all. Can you make anything out?” 

Adora leans in close and squints. “Just barely,” she says. “Over there on the upper right side: Jaws of Darkness. There’s a bit after that but I can’t—” She shakes her head. “The rest is too degraded.” 

He nods and carefully starts to pack it back up. “Jaws of Darkness...I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before. Does it sound familiar, dear?” 

George pokes his head up from the large leather tome he’s spent the past hour absorbed in. “I believe it was in a separate text. Have you tried the —” 

“— Erelandia collection?” Lance grins. He places the scroll back in its protective glass and pulls off his gloves. “Yes. Yes! It must be there. Come now, Adora.” 

She follows after him to a different room, much smaller than their main collection. The walls are lined with books. There’s no windows. The air's warmer than outside, the temperature better controlled. She hadn't even realized she was slightly chilly until she now when she no longer is. 

“Ah," laughs Lance. “I like it better out there. Controlled temperature. To better preserve these books.” 

She nods. “Oh. Cool. Are these older than the ones out there?” 

“Some of them, yes. Others are not, but we found them in worse conditions.” He pulls a green leather-bound hardback from the very top shelf. He hands it to her with a smile. “I believe this is the one. If not, you can try all those on that shelf. They should all be related.” 

“Thank you, Lance. Really. To both you and George,” she says. “I really appreciate you helping me like this.” 

“It’s a pleasure, Adora.” He smiles and ruffles her hair. “You’re family. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to adjust to losing the sword, but I’m sure we’ll find answers if we search hard enough.” He searches her face and then clicks his tongue. “You wait here. I’ll go get you a pillow and a blanket. You can’t take any of these books out of the room so if you want to go through them, you’ll have to stay here.” 

The door clicks shut behind him. She pulls two more books off the shelf Lance singled out and settles herself in a corner, leaving the other two books beside her. She cracks open the one Lance handed her and starts reading. 

Back in the Horde she’d done okay in her studies. Regardless of what Shadow Weaver said, the only reason Adora managed to rise to the top of her class was due to her team. They all studied together; went over battle strategies and terms with one another until it was seared into her memory. It had always been difficult for her to focus on her own, always preferring to have another person with her to bounce ideas around with. For so long that had been Catra.

She struggles to concentrate now. She has to skim over the opening passages at least five times before she absorbs any of it. The First Ones language in this one is archaic. The sentence structure makes it difficult to fully understand and the metaphors leave her head throbbing. At some point Lance returns and wraps her up in a fluffy blanket. He leaves a soft looking pink sweater folded on the ground next to the other books, along with a mug of hot chocolate still so warm steam curls in the air above it. Adora ignores it all, leaving the first book for another: a journal this time. She continues to skim until one passage forces her to slow down: 

_The magic buried deep within the core of the planet remains a mystery even to those that have traveled into the deepest of caves. All that remains confirmed as of yet is that the only five runestones are naturally made: the Moonstone, the Heart-Blossom, the Pearl, the Fractal Flake, and the Black Garnet. Other runestones exist within Etheria; however, these do not wield the elemental powers the aforementioned five possess and are therefore fundamentally weaker. Only a Queen and a princess can channel the magic of an elemental runestone. Those not nature-made are accessible to a select few, regardless of royal lineage. The common factor: Strong magical abilities._

_One question haunts those that continue to explore the depths of the planet: Can a runestone far greater than the elemental ones be forged?_

  
  
  


Light Hope, as she once was. She reaches towards Adora, flickering lavender, then blue, then back again. “The Heart,” she says. “Adora, the Heart —”

Mara’s face interposed between glitches, tears in her eyes. “I never —” 

“The Heart —” 

“— wanted to be a hero.” 

“— the Heart —” 

A warm hand cradling her cheek. Adora blinks and Catra smiles back at her, fanged, all teeth, eyes crinkling at the corner. She opens her mouth: “The Heart,” Light Hope’s voice says, except Catra continues to smile. “Find the Heart.” 

Adora startles awake in the low light of the library. She rubs at her forehead and frowns at the indentation of the bookshelf at her skin. On her lap rests the blue leather-bound book she’d been reading, thankfully shut. She reaches for the hot chocolate and finds it long chilled. She downs it anyways. 

“The Heart,” she whispers. She scowls into the empty, windowless room. 

  
  
  
  


Excerpt of an unknown First One researcher’s journal, estimated date of ~1200 years ago, page 145: 

_Not a runestone, but a person. No more mere imaginings: The elemental magic of Etheria need not live solely within princesses. She-Ra, they call her. Not a princess; not at all. Rather, a girl chosen at random, one the planet finds worthy. She is the protector — or rather its magical conduit. There still remains so many questions! Need she be Etherian? What of those born off planet that migrate and settle and grow with the orbits of the moons? Could, perhaps, they be chosen as well?_

_The current She-Ra lives in a village, honing her powers, still far too young to charge off into battle. Soon she will travel to Mystacor where she will begin her magical training which remains a mystery to us all. The Sorcerers Guild refuse invitations to interview with us. They continue to scoff at every question and outstretched hand. They mock us and our technology, as though they live so much better with their unexplained magic._

_Regardless, there are whispers among the villagers. Jaws of darkness, a cavern of fire, they say, only for the flow of information to shutter closed once they take notice of my team and I._

  
  
  
  


Excerpt of an unknown First One researcher’s journal, estimated date ~1200 years ago, page 280: 

_[smudged, faded text]...fire was unsuccessful yet again. All attempts to enter were met with injuries and one fatality. I’m not quite sure how to explain Lavender’s passing to her wife. All in the name of research, I suppose._

_The lengths the bosses are willing to pull us through are beginning to feel...questionable; unethical, even. That poor girl...Mystacor sent out a search party for her. At night I hear the calls of Serenia’s name. Serenia. Named after a previous She-Ra, I’ve learned. Her parents believe they’ve doomed her in doing so. She’s barely fourteen years of age…_

_They’ve yet to tell us what experiments they’re conducting. Perhaps I’m a coward; I remain afraid to ask as it’s far better to stew in ignorance. Etheria is beautiful...the power of She-Ra a culmination of that beauty. I’ve witnessed the healing abilities she possesses. She could have saved Lavender, I believe._

_[Lines further smudged; others scratched out. It continues this way for an entire page.]_

_I feel...conflicted._

  
  
  
  


Excerpt of an unknown First One researcher’s journal, estimated date ~1200 years ago, page 345: 

_What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done?_ _What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done?_ _What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done? What have we done?_

_WHAT HAVE WE DONE?_

  
  
  
  


Excerpt of an unknown First One researcher’s journal, estimated date ~1200 years ago, page 350: 

_Serenia died._

_Transfer of magic successful._

_Sword of Protection functional or shall be once the next She-Ra is chosen. Serenity stone connected to the Heart of Etheria._

_Trials for the new She-Ra have begun. She shall be Eternian._

_Experiment HE-MAN will be conducted by a different team. I shall remain on Etheria._

  
  
  
  
  


Only mentions, Adora finds. Mentions of caverns full of fire, a test or a trial, She-Ra’s magic, the runestones — her frustration grows and crests the more she reads and the less she finds. Every lead she finds turns a sharp corner into a dead-end: degraded text, ripped or burned pages. Her head threatens to split open. 

The journal’s...disturbing, to say the least. Standing at the center of Beast Island showed her just how corrupt the First Ones had been. Her stomach still turns at the memory of Mara falling to her knees, beams of energy shining from her eyes and mouth. “A weapon,” Entrapta had grinned, and Adora fought off the urge to empty her stomach right then and there. 

Knowing now that...something happened to a previous She-Ra, the last before the sword...Adora gnaws at the inside of her cheek. She runs a hand over the supple leather cover. She leaves it on the floor beside her and draws her knees to her chest, cocooned in the soft blanket. 

It’s like this that Bow finds her. She hears him before she sees him. She would recognize his purposeful steps anywhere, even if she hadn’t heard the sharp cracks in his voice as he fervently spoke with one of his dads. 

She hears a final, “You should’ve told me,” right before the door to the preservation room opens. Bow takes one look at her surrounded by a mountain of books and groans. 

Lance stands behind him, scowling. “Shut the door, Bow. In or out, you know the rules.” 

In a gesture so childish it’s a visceral shock to witness, Bow rolls his eyes and shuts the door behind him. Then it’s just Adora and him, staring at one another across a too cold room. He crosses his arms. She scratches at a healing mosquito bite beneath her right ear. 

“You didn’t tell anyone where you went,” he says.

“Oops?” she says, then flinches. 

“You can’t just — Adora, you can’t just disappear when we’re in the middle of a planetary invasion! Not when Glimmer just came back from being kidnapped by a literal _space emperor!_ ” His voice cracks, and his eyes fill with tears. Adora’s throat closes. “Do you know how worried I’ve been? Why didn’t you answer any of my messages to just let me know you were okay?” 

She thinks of the trackpad shut off and stuffed into the bottom of her bag. Her gaze falls to her lap. “I didn’t think —” she stops; worries at her bottom lip. “You all kept asking me to come back and I just — I wanted space to look for answers without that for a bit. I’m sorry.” 

“I get it, okay? I know this is hard, and you’re going through a really rough time, but you can’t just disappear. Not without telling anyone where you went. I thought Horde Prime got you too.” 

She can’t bear to look at him. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry.” 

He crosses the room and falls to his knees in front of her. He reaches for her hands. When she flinches, he stops. He drops his hands and settles back on his haunches. “I know,” he says, gentle. “Look, I won’t tell you to go to Bright Moon. I won’t force you to. But we need to know where you go, even if it’s just an update every other day. Horde Prime won’t attack Etheria, not for now. But we still...there’s no telling what he’ll do if he decides to capture random Etherians.” 

She nods. “How did you find me?”

“Called Lance this morning and I overheard you talking to George in the background. I came running after that.” He pauses. “Glimmer wanted to come. She’s supposed to stay in the castle. Horde Prime’s orders.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Swift Wind’s in the grand library if you want to say hi. But, uh…” 

She scowls. “What?” 

“Catra’s here too.” 

She jerks back. Her back hits the wall. “Why?” 

He raises his hands. “She said she wants to talk to you. I couldn’t talk her out of it. I know it’s a bad idea but —”

_“You think?”_

“Look,” he starts, “I...I don’t trust her either. I want to. I want to trust Glimmer’s word that Catra’s actually on our side, but it’s hard, especially after everything, but…” he tapers off, gaze drifting to a random book. “Shadow Weaver got her alone the other day. I don’t know what happened but — She’s wanted to leave for days. Kept bugging Glimmer to send her out on a mission. It’s why she was the one in Mystacor instead of me.” 

Her skin feels too thin. She thinks of the trip to Beast Island, the burn of Bow’s knowing gaze. “Should’ve sent her on a different mission.” 

“Yeah.” He pushes himself up and holds out a hand for her. “Come on. George said you’ve been sleeping in here. You can stay in one of my brothers’ old rooms. It’s next door to mine.” 

“Are you staying?” She grabs his hand and lets him pull her up. 

“Just the night,” he says. He lets go of her and guides her out the room, closing the door behind him. “We’re going to make some rounds around the villages. See if they need any supplies. You can come with us if you want, but I’d get it if you said no.” 

She shakes her head and slides her hand along the railing as they start to climb a spiraling staircase. “There’s a lot of information here that your dads haven’t been able to decipher yet. I’ve translated a lot. I...found a First One’s journal. Your dads translated a bit when they first got it, but I read through the pages still intact and it’s...It has a lot of information.” 

“Getting She-Ra back kind of information?” 

“Sort of?” 

He looks back at her. “You know that you matter to all of us with or without She-Ra, right?” 

“I know.” She stops when he does. The door in front of them gleams a pastel yellow in the brightly lit hall. “It’s more than that. It’s not just me, Bow. She-Ra existed before the sword. She’s important to the planet itself. I can’t just...I can’t just take her away. And it’s like — it’s like something was cut off. Something I didn’t notice before. Like...Like everything’s muted, I guess.” She frowns. “I think...Etheria was talking to me, somehow. Whispering? And now it’s stopped and I can’t hear anything.” She runs a hand over her face and laughs, the sound sharp in the quiet hall. “I sound crazy.” 

Bow shakes his head. “No,” he says. “It’s just hard for me to understand, I guess.” He opens the door and ushers her in. 

Inside rests a bed neatly-made, the sheets clearly fresh, as if someone changed them only a day ago. The rest of the room is spotless, plants healthy and tall and decorating the book laden shelves. A cello case rests against one corner of the room along with a drum set. Pictures line the desk, the nightstand. She tries not to stare too closely. 

She hesitates for a moment and then sits on the corner of the bed. Bow smiles at her and she forces one in return. 

“Are you and Glimmer okay?” she asks before she can stop herself. 

The smile slides off his face. He sighs; drags a hand over his face and settles next to her. “I don’t know,” he answers. He plops onto his back. “I think,” and he pauses, bereft. “I think I’m still angry.” He turns to look at her. “I’m an awful person. She gets kidnapped and I’m still mad at her.” 

“You’re not awful. You’re just human,” she says. 

“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe I’m just spiteful.” 

Adora snorts. She plops down beside him. “You don’t have a spiteful bone in your body.” 

He’s quiet for a moment. His fingers drum at his stomach. “When I saw her in the Fright Zone all I wanted to do was make sure she was safe. And now that she is…” He closes his eyes. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.” 

  
  
  
  


A dream: 

“Adora,” says Catra, her smile wide, all teeth. She hovers over Adora, straddling her hips, long, tangled hair falling over her shoulder. She leans in close. “Look what I found.” 

Shards, glittering in the off-green lighting of the barracks. The golden hilt of a sword a mockery in Catra’s offering hand. She laughs a pealing giggle so familiar Adora’s chest aches and holds the jagged ends against Adora’s neck. The bunk's mattress presses firm against her back.

“The Heart,” she says. “Find the Heart.” She grins. She’s so close her breath warms Adora’s mouth. “Leave, like you always do.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> astrology is real and aquarius szn is powerful otherwise how would i have actually updated a fic only a little more than a week later


	3. processing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> flashbacks - past tense  
> current day - present tense

“How long do you intend to…host us?” asked Glimmer on the third night. They sat at the dining table, guards posted at the doors, at their backs. Horde Prime lounged at the head of the table with a flute of champagne in hand, smiling back at her. “I wasn’t able to give my people notice that I’d be — visiting interplanetary dignitaries. They’re probably looking for me.” She paused. She glanced at Catra, nothing more than a quick flick of the eye. Hardly what Catra would call subtle. “I’d like to ease their worries. With your blessing, of course.”

“Of course,” he said with a grin. Everything about him raised the hairs on Catra’s arms, the back of her neck. The fluid confidence gracing his limbs, the curling amusement in every word out of his mouth were so stark from Hordak, the opposite of a shadowed imitation. He held his flute out without question or demand and a soundless clone appeared to refill it. “I understand the concern, Your Majesty. I’ll be sure to have you back to your people soon enough.”

The tension eased from Glimmer’s shoulders as she sighed. She smiled back at Horde Prime. “Thank you.”

“And what about you?” He turned to look at Catra. His third and fourth eye stared unblinkingly at her. “I’m sure your loved ones are just as concerned, are they not?”

Everything Catra knew about survival she gleaned from a lifetime under Shadow Weaver’s tutelage, absorbing her cruelty in the same breadth she’d take the abuse, finding a way to twist and mold the creeping fright into something useful, something malleable. She recognized this: the soft prod, a hand reached out to rifle through her weaknesses.

No one was looking for her. She resigned herself to it the second she found herself aboard this ship.

Justice, she figured. She’d just have to save herself.

She smiled. “I’m enjoying my accommodations,” she said. “I’m sure they’d understand.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


The first night, Glimmer slept on the singular bed and Catra curled up on the floor with a pillow and blanket. The second night, Glimmer insisted on switching, that it was only fair, so Catra found herself on a too soft mattress, utterly sleepless.

The third night:

“You didn’t answer his question,” said Glimmer, perched on the edge of the bed. The room itself was ornate, fit for royalty. A guest room for the jewels of the empire, Horde Prime had said with a cruel twist of the mouth.

Catra picked at a thread from the pillow case. “That’s how you deal with an egomaniac, Sparkles.” She looked up at her from her spot on the floor. “You don’t give them anything.”

Glimmer fixed her eyes on Catra. “What are you even doing here? Why did you — Why save me? Etheria?”

“Are you complaining?”

“What? No! I just — I don’t get it. You don’t care about Etheria. You opened the portal.”

Catra wasn’t quite sure what to do with the look on Glimmer’s face; didn’t really know how to sift through the past few days, let alone the past few years. The girl sitting so resolute ways across from her was so wholly different than the princess she first met Catra found herself unable to maintain her stare, eyes falling to the floor.

“I know,” she said, finally. Her voice held. It did not waver or stutter. The guilt never left, no matter how deeply she buried it. “I made a choice, once —” _to rip her hand away from Adora’s grip; to slash at Shadow Weaver’s mask, only to fall back into her palms; to scream and yell until Scorpia stared back, face utterly blank, like Catra had in her life so many times before._ “Isn’t it time I made a better one?”

“How can I trust that?” Glimmer asked. Her hands clenched into fists on her lap. “How can I just trust that you’ve changed after everything?”

“You can’t,” she said. “But what choice do either of us have?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Catra pulls on a gray cloak once morning rolls in. The Horde insignia remains on her back. It has to, no matter how badly she wants to rip it off, stomp it under her heel until it and everything it holds crumble into dust. When she looks in the mirror she does not recognize who stares back.

George showed her to one of their many guest rooms after Bow and Lance stomped off to find Adora. It’s fine. Comfortable, really. She slept what little she could and now, with the second moon’s rays streaming through the window, she’s ready to bite her tongue around a talking horse and a man she’s thrown off a cliff.

Better than haunting the halls of Bright Moon Castle, she guesses.

She steps out of the room, bag slung over her shoulder, and shuts the door behind her. The hall looks the same regardless of which way she looks. The library’s too big. Why does anyone need this much space for a bunch of books?

The turning of a handle. Her ears perk up. She turns to watch as down the hall a door opens and out steps Adora, hair loose and long over her shoulders. Even with the distance between them the bags underneath her eyes blare dark and heavy. When she looks back at Catra, her eyes narrow. She’s never been the best at marshaling her expressions.

Catra’s throat closes. She grips the strap of the bag slung over her shoulder and stares back, her own face artfully blank.

“You shouldn’t have come,” says Adora. She’s always been blunt. It’s something Catra both admired and resented growing up. Adora could speak her mind. Adora could open her mouth and articulate her feelings with abandon unlike Catra who had to think, and plan, and worry at the consequences of every breath she took.

She’s tired, she realizes.

“I’ll make sure to lodge your complaint at the Queen,” she replies.

Adora exhales through her nose, so clearly annoyed, so clearly attempting and failing at reigning her emotions. Catra used to love that about her. She aches, now.

“If you hurt Bow,” she starts, taking a step forward, “if you hurt anyone — I don’t care anymore, Catra. I don’t. If you hurt anyone else I won’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

She knew that. She knows that. She’d seen it the second Adora’s eyes met hers in the aftermath of a broken portal and she’d seen it as Adora stared up at her from a trap of her own making and she sees it on her now, even returned to herself from She-Ra’s looming form.

Even knowing as long as she has doesn’t lessen the sting. Adora might as well have slapped her.

“Noted,” she says. “Anything else you need to get off your chest?”

The look Adora sends her way almost forces her to take a step back. “I’m serious.”

Catra forces a smile. She slips back easily into her role opposite Adora. It’s simple. It’s habit. Better to poke and prod at all the vulnerable parts of Adora than to strip bare and allow herself to be the girl that misses the one person she’s loved all her life. “Aren’t you always, princess?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


After half an hour lost in the winding halls of the library, Catra steps into the kitchen and finds Adora cradling a mug of tea. Their eyes meet. Something shifts in Adora’s expression, minute, barely decipherable, and then it shutters closed and the girl staring back at her returns to someone Catra no longer knows.

George steps in behind Catra and ruffles her hair. “Good morning,” he says, smiling, and starts preparing a fresh pot of coffee.

“I’m going to read,” Adora says. Then she shoulders past Catra and leaves.

“Dedicated girl.” George leans back against the kitchen counter. “Would you want to help us in translating some First Ones texts?”

Catra shrugs, patting down her hair. “Don’t know the language,” she says. She nods at the pot of coffee. “Can I have some when that’s done?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks.”

She takes a seat at one of the many small wooden tables. The kitchen’s quaint, with wide windows that allow rays of moonlight to stream through. It’s unlike the bustling Bright Moon kitchens with its smiling chefs or the Fright Zones kitchens with its off set green bulbs and large industrial fridges. Little magnets decorate the fridge here: pictures of smiling boys, all clearly related but all with the same kind eyes; one blue, white, and pink striped flag magnet holds up a child’s drawing of the library itself, the bottom signed in big, bubbly letters “BOW.” The cabinets have little stickers plastered all over them and she even sees two stick figures holding hands, one with a mustache, another with long squiggly lines of hair.

It’s all so tooth achingly sweet and domestic. Catra forces herself to look away.

George sets down a large blue mug in front of her. Little white clouds are painted on its surface. Catra mumbles a thanks and cradles it between two hands as he takes a seat across from her, sipping at his own mug, this one bright purple with little books on it.

“So, Bow said you’re the Glimmer’s new advisor.”

Catra shrugs as she takes a sip of her coffee. “Yeah.”

“That’s quite a promotion,” says George. “How long were you with the Rebellion before you got the position?”

She snorts. She doesn’t mean to. She bites the inside of her cheek; holds back the borderline hysteric laugh threatening to burst from her lips. “Just joined, actually.”

George eyes her, frowning. Just as he opens his mouth to say something else, Lance walks in with a groggy Bow, an arm slung over his son’s shoulders. When Lance catches sight of George, his face brightens, his mouth curving into an easy smile.

“Good morning,” he says. He lets go of Bow and presses a quick kiss to George’s cheek. He then wrinkles his nose at the steaming mug in George’s hand. “Ugh.”

Bow rolls his eyes as he plops into the seat next to Catra. His head lolls in her direction and he says, “Lance hates coffee. George loves it. Their one point of friction.”

“You get addicted to it and then you can’t sleep,” says Lance. He moves towards the burners, lighting one, and then pours water into a kettle. “It’s awful.”

“He only drinks coffee with at least five spoonfuls of sugar.” George smiles, the curve of his mouth fond, affectionate, even as Bow groans. “Do you want a cup, son?”

“Tea,” he answers.

“You usually this chipper in the morning?” Catra says.

George snorts. “Only at home.”

“Please. Not right now,” says Bow.

“Adora said Bow’s a morning person and we just couldn’t believe it,” chimes in Lance, now with two mugs in hand. He sets one down in front of Bow and takes a seat next to George. “But he also ran off to secretly become a soldier so there’s always more to learn about our mysterious archer.”

Catra blinks, then blinks again. She turns to look at Bow, only to find him blushing bright red. He meets her eyes and sits up straight.

“Anyways,” he starts, “we’re gonna check on the surrounding villages, see what supplies they need. Are there any shortages here?”

George frowns. “Not that I can think of.”

“Me either.” Lance shrugs.

“Great. Uh, if we can’t make it through them all by the time it gets dark we’ll probably come back here. Bright Moon’s a little crowded right now.”

“Is the entire alliance staying in the castle?” asks Lance.

Bow nods. “Just until the whole Horde Prime situation gets figured out.”

“Well, keep us as updated as you can. We’ll let you know about Adora and our research, of course.” Lance smiles at Catra. “Is there anything we could do for you?”

She pauses, mug half raised to her mouth. “Uh...No?”

“Alright,” he says. “You’re welcome here any time, you know. Any friend of Bow’s is.”

She and Bow glance at one another. She sets down her mug and forces a smile back. “I appreciate it. Thanks.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


“What did you end up saying to her?” asks Bow. He finishes packing all their belongings onto Swift Wind and turns to her with a raised eyebrow.

“Why are you assuming that I said something to her?” she scoffs. She leans back against the outside wall of the library and crosses her arms. “Why couldn’t it have been that she said something to me?”

Bow stares back at her, brow still raised. Catra decides she hates him.

“Can we just leave already? We’re wasting time.”

“Nah, I’m with Bow,” says the horse. Because the horse can talk. Adora has a talking horse. She became a princess with long, flowing hair and a tiara and a talking, flying horse. “She was upset. I could sense it.”

“You’ve been saying she’s upset since I met you.”

“Well…you’re an upsetting person.”

“Swift Wind,” says Bow, scowling. He turns to Catra. “Listen, you said you wanted to talk to her. I was just wondering if you got to.”

“We all heard her giant feet stomping around. So, yes, we talked.”

He stares at her. His eyes are wide, and warm, and earnest in a way that reminds her of Scorpia — who still refuses to talk to her for more than five minutes. After the bone crushing hug when she returned it had been awkward lulls of silence only filled when Perfuma invaded their space, so glaringly obvious in the way she hovered near Scorpia, all nervous hands and bright eyes. It might’ve been less grating if it weren’t for the soft, easy smiles Scorpia threw her way, or the way Scorpia rested a claw on Perfuma’s shoulder and said, “We’ll talk later,” so gentle and warm, a tone she had once used towards Catra.

Catra sighs. She runs a hand over her face. “Whatever. Let’s just go, please.”

The ride to Thaymor takes no more than maybe half an hour flying on Swift Wind’s back. Had they walked it would’ve taken them majority of the day. In the time since she first invaded it the village managed to rebuild itself entirely, the buildings back to their original structures if only slightly neater, stronger. Children race around outside, chasing one another except for a stray few who lay back on the ground and point at the ships up in the sky.

“Look at that one,” a small white-furred child says, their antlers small and barely jutting from their hairline. “It’s huge.”

She follows their line of sight. Her stomach bottoms out. Horde Prime’s ship dwarves the surrounding ones, large and sleek, reeking power even so far below it. Her hands shake. When she looks away, she finds Bow staring back at her, brows furrowed.

“What?” she snaps. She shoulders past him and grabs her bag from Swift Wind. “Quit staring. Let’s get this over with.”

They find the village elder, who thankfully doesn’t recognize Catra, and pull together a list of dwindling supplies. It’s quick and easy, with barely any small talk. Bow handles it better than Catra figured he would: he’s straight to the point and once they finish up he gathers their belongings and takes them back to Swift Wind lounging in the warm, summer breeze.

It continues this way for the rest of the day. Bow turns back at times, his eyes searching hers, seemingly working up the nerve to ask her something, only to keep his mouth shut and carry on. It’s not until the second moon begins to set that he stops on their way to Swift Wind and says, “Neither of you mention what he was like.”

Catra freezes.

He looks back at her, scowling. “I didn’t want to ask…Things are tense enough back at the castle as is. But — You and Glimmer won’t talk about it. I brought it up once and that didn’t go over well.”.

She can’t even begin to imagine that conversation. Glimmer rarely brought their time up in the ship with her and they shared a room throughout it all. She smooths the creases of her cloak with trembling hands; forces her face blank, empty, and says, “There’s not much to talk about.”

“Kinda finding that hard to believe.”

“Well, that’s a you problem, isn’t it?”

“Catra,” he sighs. “Please. I just — I want to help. I want to know how to help.”

“You’re out here helping a bunch of random civilians, aren’t you?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

She looks at him curiously. She doesn’t know what she expected. The easy hand he extended back when he and Glimmer captured her strikes different than the open desperation now. Double Trouble said the trio was fractured, but Catra hadn’t been prepared to step into the chasms.

“Look…I can’t — I can’t get into whatever drama the three of you are going through —”

“It’s not that!” He drags his hands over his face. “We just fought one war and immediately fell into another one and no one except you and Glimmer know our enemy. No one! How are we supposed to fight someone you two can barely even name? How are we supposed to strategize and figure out his weaknesses when we don’t know anything about him?”

She pauses. “You’re right.”

“I know I am.” He sighs again. “I’m not a strategist like you or have magic like the princesses. I build things and I try to keep some morale for everyone but I’m not — I’m not stupid, okay?”

“I know.”

His eyes fix on her. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” she says. “Why do you think I captured you at the All Princess Ball? Why do you think I tried to throw you over a cliff?” She shrugs. A soft breeze eases past. Freshly cut, too short strands of hair tickle her face. “You’ve always been too important to the Rebellion, Bow.”

His shoulders sag. A trembling hand presses against his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

Everything from the curve of his shoulders to the defeated words rings too familiar. Catra almost reaches out, but her hands clench at her side. “Then I’ll keep reminding you,” she says, and finds she means it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“You tried to stop it,” she whispered in the dead of night. “You had your weapon and you tried to stop it.”

The rustling of sheets broke the silence that followed and then Glimmer stared down bleary-eyed from the bed, hair standing up at one end like it had before the portal. “What?”

“You could’ve won,” she said. “Why didn’t you set it off? You could’ve won.”

“I was wrong,” Glimmer replied.

“So was I. But I still pulled the switch.”

Silence stretched between them. Like this, Catra couldn’t read Glimmer. From the start she thought she had her figured out: sparkly princess; friend stealer; believer in the power of good and friendship. It changed, slightly, when she and Bow took Catra prisoner. When she held her up by the shirt, magic glittering in her fist, ready to wipe the smirk from Catra’s face, that’s when Catra recognized that simmer of anger just ready to be brought to a boil. That fight in the outpost of the Whispering Woods only punctuated what Catra suspected: Glimmer’s rage reflected her own.

“I hated that Adora was right,” said Glimmer. “I hated it more than anything. But her being right meant the world could end, so what choice did I have?”

“To let it burn.”

Glimmer shook her head. “I couldn’t,” and she shook her head again. “I could never. That’s wrong. I’m not —” she tapered off.

“Not me,” Catra said. She smiled, and Glimmer met Catra’s stare unfailingly. “C’mon, Sparkles. You’ve never been afraid to throw a punch. Don’t hold out on me now.”

“Fine. Adora loved you. Do you know what that’s like? Watching your friend pine after someone so eager to destroy everything and knowing that she deserves better, but she just won’t stop hoping.” Glimmer leaned forward, looking as if she meant to end Catra. Anger flushed her face red. “She would have forgiven you for everything. Everything! And then you killed my mother.”

“I —” she began, and then stopped. A part of her rose up in defense, but the wiser part of her, the part that fell to her knees, the part of her that still sat crumpled in the ruins of the Fright Zone, knew to bite her tongue. She shut her eyes. She exhaled. “I know.”

When she opened her eyes, Glimmer stared back, the angry look on her face narrowed into scrutinization, aimed solely at her.

“It’s your fault she’s gone,” said Glimmer. “I blamed Adora for so long. But it’s your fault, not hers.”

Her name felt like a weapon between them. “Guess we have that in common.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you do it?”

_The world crumbling around her, and Adora, desperate, desolate even though it was her fault, she could just stay, she could just stay, hands reaching for her right as Catra let go and fell into the fizzling purple void, only to come back wrong, her body not her own but rather something else entirely, something hate filled, something simmering with rage —_

“I hated that Adora was right.” She looked at Glimmer. “I hated it more than anything.”

“So you let the world burn.” A bitter laugh escaped Glimmer. “And now, here we are. My mother dead, Etheria in shambles, Hordak gone and replaced by someone even worse.” She ran a hand over her face. “That’s my fault too.”

“Maybe.” She ran her tongue over the chipped end of one fang. She wondered how much was her fault and how much was done to her. She wished she could draw it out, like a map, and arm herself with the knowledge of what was and wasn’t her fault. Instead, she said, “Maybe that’s just war.”

Glimmer eyed her. “Doesn’t mean you can’t take responsibility for your actions.”

“I made my choice. I’m living with it,” she replied. “I’m trying, Sparkles.”

Out here in space it was impossible to gauge the passage of time. The single window held glass so thick it was impossible to shatter. Pinpricks of stars cut through the darkness and Catra found herself tracing the incomprehensible patterns as silence blanketed over her and Glimmer.

“How do you live with it?” asked Glimmer.

Catra’s eyes flickered to meet hers. “What?”

A frown deepened on Glimmer’s face. “How do you live with just — fucking up so bad? Knowing that you messed up so bad that the people you love the most can’t even stand with you?” She said it with no trace of self-pity, only objective fact. She said it so earnestly that Catra was struck again by the realization that this must be why her and Adora befriended one another.

“I’m not the person to ask,” she said, finally. “Clearly.”

Glimmer snorted. “The list of people that almost ended the world is pretty small. I think that makes you exactly the person to ask.”

“Well,” she said, “I haven’t exactly lived with it, have I?”

“An understatement.”

“We’re in the same league, now, Sparkles.”

“I know. It’s a real low for me.”

“Not that hard for you to be low, is it?”

“We’re, like, the same height, Catra.”

“If you say so,” she said, smug smile tugging at her mouth when Glimmer rolled her eyes. The expression fell all too soon and she smoothed down the back of her hair. “Do you think he’ll actually let us go?”

“I don’t know,” and Glimmer paused. “He’s…I don’t know what to make of him.”

The way Hordak spoke of Horde Prime, equal admiration and fear interwoven into every word, only said so much. Catra thought of the way he begged right before Horde Prime rebooted him, the way Horde Prime said, “There was even a time you wished for me not to find you,” and knew that whatever Hordak had been was but a shadow of Horde Prime’s cruelty.

“You’re one of the good guys,” she said, finally, chest aching. “Things will always work out for you.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s dark by the time they make it back to the library. Catra finds herself wondering if George will lay a gentle hand on her head again. She wonders if he’ll ruffle her hair and if she’ll let him. She thinks she would. Then she remembers Adora somewhere in those silent halls and lingers outside for too long a moment.

At the door Bow stops and looks back at her with a raised brow. “You okay?”

She nods. She nods again. Her throat tightens. “Fine.”

They head towards the kitchen after leaving Swift Wind outside to fly back to Bright Moon and report to Glimmer. She follows after Bow, silent, eyes catching the occasional family portrait and photograph of Bow or his brothers or all of them together or in smaller groups. Lance and George are always hugging one another or their sons. The library radiates warmth in a way the Fright Zone never could.

Just as they step into the kitchen, Lance and George go quiet, heads bent together close while sat at the table. They look up at her and Bow, dual guilt transparent on their faces, practically dripping in the air around them.

Bow stops. His shoulders form a solid, tense line. “What’s wrong?”

George squeezes Lance’s hand. He hesitates. “Adora took the First One’s journal. We don’t know when. I know you told us to look after her, but we — I’m sorry,” he says. “She’s gone.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha remember when i posted this fic and marked it as only 4 chapters that sure was ambitious of me


	4. regulation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you’ll never catch me uploading new chapters at a decent EST hour 
> 
> warnings for mild violence and implied surgical horror at the end

“I’ve seen my brother’s memories,” Horde Prime told her.

Catra looked up from one of the many trinkets laid out in Horde Prime’s study. It was a vast, plentiful room. Whereas the rest of the ship was sleek, organized, the study cluttered with evidence of his conquering: crowns, and weapons, and things beyond Catra’s comprehension.

Horde Prime stood by one of the viewing panes, hands clasped behind his back, just as he had since the moment Catra stepped into the room following his summons. He stared out at Etheria below them. In the silence that followed, he turned to look at her and smiled.

“Programming sentient beings is interesting, especially copies of yourself,” he continued. “I give and take away something different every time. An inclination for cruelty, or a love for beauty. Just the smallest variable of difference. Otherwise how will you ever know the difference between the original and the others?” He made his way across the room. He stopped near her and picked up the decorated, sheathed knife she had been looking at. “Can you guess what I took from Hordak?”

She shook her head.

The corners of his mouth curled. “Self-worth.” He extended his hand towards her, the hilt of the knife facing her. “Look where that led him.”

She accepted the knife. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I like what I saw,” he said. “You led his forces well. You tricked him so easily. It’s admirable. Tell me, how long were you working for the Rebellion?”

“Since after She-Ra defected.”

Horde Prime nodded. “That’s what he figured as well. Funny, how well that worked; how effective you were at bringing down the Horde.”

She gripped the knife. Her claws remained sheathed; her tail, neatly tucked between her legs, the tip curled around her left thigh. “He wasn’t a good leader,” she said. “I did what I had to.”

“I respect that you went out of your way to ensure he’d be replaced by someone better,” he replied. He reached out and curled a lock of her hair around a talon. Her breath hitched. “You won’t lie to me, will you, Catra?”

“Of course not.”

He grinned, all teeth. His third and fourth eye fixed on her. “I don’t take promises lightly.”

“Neither do I.”

“I know.” He tugged at the lock of hair hard enough to sting. Catra held back a flinch. “You and I stand here with no barriers or walls between us. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

A simple flick of the wrist, a sharp sting and Catra hissed, pressing a hand to her head. Horde Prime continued to smile at her, a long lock of curling brown hair hanging from his talon. He raised it up to his nose and sniffed, his nose wrinkling, and then settled it on the surface of the table along with every other trinket.

“Your allegiance is to me. Not the Rebellion; not the Queen; not yourself; not even,” he leaned in close, gripping Catra’s chin hard between two talons, “to She-Ra. Everything they say, everything they do, you tell me. Everything you so much as think, you tell me.” He let go of her, taking care to wipe a bead of blood from her chin. “In return, I extend the same courtesy to you.”

Catra nodded again.

“I’m glad you understand,” he said. “I knew you would. The witch raised you well, don’t you agree?”

She smoothed her expression. She let her hand fall away from the stinging, bleeding clear patch of skin on her head. Despite the lump growing in her throat, she nodded once more and said, “She taught me everything I know.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Do you have any idea where she went?” ask Bow, again.

Lance paces the space of Bow’s room as Bow continues to pack. “None at all. She didn’t even leave her notes. She took her bag, the journal — she even raided the kitchen. But…” he tapers off. He runs a hand over his face. “She did leave behind the tablet.”

Bow pauses. His hand rests on his own tablet. From her perch at his desk chair, Catra watches as he clenches his hand into a fist and his knuckles pale.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. That’s fine. We’ll get Swift Wind back here. He’ll be able to sense her. We’ll find her.”

“Can he still do that?” she asks before she even thinks to. When Bow levels a glare her way, she shrugs. “Look, I’m just being realistic. She doesn’t have She-Ra’s powers right now. So, can he sense her now?”

Bow’s shoulders droop. He shoves the tablet into his bag; pulls the drawstring tight and shoulders the strap. “I’m hoping. That’s enough for now.”

Catra frowns. Maybe a year ago she would’ve found some joy in the dejected frown on Bow’s face, the ease in which Adora continued to run and run from the people she left Catra for, but she finds the space her anger once resided in hollow.

It takes Swift Wind around an hour to return after Bow called Glimmer to tell her to turn him back around. Lance and George fuss over Bow — George even takes a second to wrap a fluffy white scarf around Catra’s neck. He smiles at her, eyes crinkled at the corners, and tells her to be careful. Her mouth dries. She blinks away the burn of tears, struggles to find something to say, except a loud neigh cuts through the air right as hooves stomp onto the ground only feet away from them all.

“I know where she is,” says Swift Wind. Then he shrugs — or rather he does the horse approximation of a shrug. “Vaguely. I can feel her, sort of. So — more like I know the general area of where she is.”

“That’s good enough,” Bow says. He presses a kiss to both of his dads’ cheeks and runs to jump onto Swift Wind’s back. He nods to Catra. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” she says. She ignores the looks Lance and George send her way, her face warm. She clammers onto Swift Wind’s back; reluctantly settles her arms around Bow’s waist. “Let’s just go already.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Swift Wind soars past the Whispering Woods, the remains of the Fright Zone. Flying doesn’t get easier, no matter how often Catra does it. She clings onto Bow, careful to keep her claws sheathed, careful of how tight she squeezes his stomach. The line of Bow’s back draws straight, a taut line, and in the time since they’ve taken off he’s said nothing.

Up above Horde Prime’s fleets remain. She tries her hardest not to look up at them, but finds herself drawn to them every so often. She quickly loses count; can’t even comprehend the amount of ships tethered above them. He knows where she is. She knows it. The lump at the back of her neck burns with the knowledge.

Her arms squeeze Bow tighter. She clenches her eyes shut.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Okay, she’s somewhere around here,” Swift Wind says as he lands in a large, violet field. The tall, blooming flowers sway gently with the wind.

Catra blinks once, twice. She spins in a slow, small circle. “Uh,” she starts, hands resting on her hips, “there’s literally nothing here.”

“She’s in the area, okay? I know it.”

“Sure doesn’t seem like it. You sure you didn’t just want to go for a picnic?”

“Why would I want to go on a picnic when Adora’s missing?” he snaps. His wings draw close to his sides. “I want her back!”

She almost says, Welcome to the club. She swallows it back; says, instead: “I don’t know! But there’s nothing here, so clearly something’s off with your stupid magical horse connection.”

“Okay, stop!” Bow comes between them, both hands held up. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. She’s following a First One’s journal, right? Maybe she’s underground or something. There’s a bunch of their tech underground, so maybe they also have, I don’t know, temples down there too.”

Catra and Swift Wind glance at one another. Catra crosses her arms, letting her eyes fall away. “Right. Okay. How do we get underground?”

Bow blinks at her, then scowls. “I don’t know. We search for weird, ancient entrances. Something that screams She-Ra and magic, I guess.”

“You guess.”

“I’m trying, Catra,” he says. He drags his hands down his face. “I’m trying, okay? Can we just — Can we just look?”

She almost bites back; feels the rising need to snarl, to push at his buttons. Old habits, she knows, and reels it all back. She settles a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll take the east. Swift Wind can fly overhead and see if he catches anything weird. That work with you?”

He nods. He squeezes her hand and smiles, nothing more than a small curve of the mouth, tired and worn down.

“We’ll find her,” he says.

  
  
  
  
  


“What did he want?” asked Glimmer. She sat on the bed, legs crossed. After so long on the ship the pink curls on her head hung limp and dull, long enough to nearly brush her shoulders now.

The doors slid shut behind Catra with a hiss and then a click of the lock. She scowled. The patch on her head soothed to an aching throb. The point of her chin smarted with the beginnings of a bruise. What would Glimmer even do if she knew, she wondered. What could she even do?

“He wanted to know more about the conflict between the Horde and the Rebellion,” she answered. She plopped down onto the bed beside Glimmer. She laid flat on her back, hands resting on her belly, concave after weeks of dwindling food supplies in the Fright Zone. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Oh,” Glimmer said. She played with a loose thread on her cape. “Did he mention when we might leave?”

“Not yet.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” she said. “I was a double agent for the Rebellion. I worked to destroy it from the inside out. Horde was an ineffective leader and I wanted him gone.”

Glimmer’s eyebrows furrowed. She stared at Catra, still twirling that loose thread around her fingers, just like Horde Prime had done with Catra’s hair. Catra’s heart beat hard against the hollow of her throat.

“I’ll take the floor tonight.” Glimmer grabbed her pillow and threw it to the floor. She glanced at Catra and pointed at her chin. “You’re bleeding, by the way.”

Catra said nothing. She wrapped the blankets around herself, turning her back to Glimmer, and feigned sleep, listening and counting Glimmer’s slowing breaths. Only hours later did she raise her hand to the clear patch of scalp, right above where a greying tuft was beginning to grow out.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Catra finds a metallic circular slab after hours of sifting through the tall stalks. The familiar slant of a language beyond her comprehension sits below her, glowing a faint cyan, emitting a faint, barely audible noise. She hates magic.

“I hate magic,” she whispers. Then, loud enough to echo: “I found something!”

Bow and Swift Wind all but crash into her in their rush. Bow grabs her hand and grins, squeezing tight. “Okay. Okay! She’s gotta be down there, right?” He turns to Swift Wind. “Can you get us in?”

“I can try.” He steps forward, then lowers his head, the tip of his horn poking the very center of the slab. Both the horn and the slab begin to glow a collection of light that swells and grows until Catra’s forced to cover her eyes. A loud groan overtakes the silence and when both it and the blinding light fade Catra blinks to find a narrow staircase below them, bright and iridescent, reminiscent of the Castle she and Adora once explored together.

Her hands shake. Bow looks to her and she smooths back her hair; controls the slight tremble to take a step down.

“Let’s get this over with,” she says.

The stairs lead down to a glittering hall, the walls an ever shifting kaleidoscope of colors. It’s still narrow, just enough to fit one person — or horse — at a time. They walk in silence, Bow and Swift Wind following close behind her until finally the hall opens to a wide, circular chamber, the ceiling tall and shining with what looks like an aurora borealis. At the very center a beam of light shoots up from a hole, feeding into the colors above them.

At the very center of it, a kneeling figure — a familiar, white shirt stretched over a broad back narrowing to a waist her hands were made to fit; wheat-blonde hair, longer than Catra’s ever seen it, loose and fluttering over her shoulders. A red jacket lies tattered beside Adora, shredded to pieces.

The relief breathes so palpable, so viscerally into Catra that the sound she lets out borders a laugh, a sob. She runs to Adora, barely aware of Bow and Swift Wind doing the same.

“Adora,” she says. “Adora!”

Adora snaps back. Her eyes, her mouth — they burn white.

“Stay back,” she says, except it’s not her voice, but multiple voices layered over one another, beyond comprehension, all so intertwined they mesh into one booming entity.

Catra stumbles to a halt. Bow and Swift Wind crash into her. They fall into a pile, Catra pushing Swift Wind’s head away, shoving Bow off her back. She pushes herself up.

Adora continues to kneel at the light. Now closer, Catra sees the split knuckles of Adora’s hands, the blood spilling from the open wound to the knees her hands rest on. Blood trickles from her ears down her neck. Light continues to pour from her pupil-less eyes, her mouth, turning her skin nearly translucent with its brilliance.

“Adora?” says Catra. She stands on shaky knees.

“Do…Do we stop this?” Bow asks Swift Wind. He rests a hand on the horse’s muzzle. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure. I — I don’t know.” He steps closer, only for Adora to look towards him, her face blank, burning. “Adora?”

“Do not come closer,” the voices say. Adora’s mouth never moves; it remains an open, endless stream of light, like a soundless scream. Above her, in the aurora borealis, a shape begins to form: a shining, circular gem. “The ritual must come to a close.”

“What does that mean?” asks Catra. She turns to Bow. “What does that mean?”

His eyes are wide, terrified. “We have to stop her,” he says.

“What if it hurts her?”

“I — I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll hurt her. But that,” he says, pointing up at the shimmering gem, “looks like the sword’s runestone.”

“Okay?”

He levels a look her way. “The sword controlled She-Ra. The First Ones created it to control She-Ra.”

Her stomach bottoms out. She looks back at Adora kneeling in a beam of light, the beginnings of a sword hanging above her head, a guillotine waiting to slice through it all again.

“We have to stop it,” Bow repeats.

Catra steps forward, her hands trembling. She clenches them into fists at her sides, claws digging into the meat of her palms, beads of blood welling in the skin. Adora turns to her without looking at her. Her hair floats around her. If Catra squints she can make out the dull, wheat colored strands blooming gold.

“Hey, Adora,” she says, stepping closer. “Pretty light show you’ve got going on here.”

The light continues to pour from Adora. It surrounds her. Blood stains the very edges of her hair, the shoulders of her shirt.

“C’mon. You’re not pissed I’m here? Don’t you wanna come out and punch me in the face again?” Catra relaxes her hands; shakes them out only to clench them into fists again. She’s close to the array of lights now. They’re heatless; formless, too. She reaches forward, a hand passing through, and feels no resistance at all. A shuddering breath escapes her.

Adora stands before her. In the space of one blink to the next she appears. One moment she kneeled on the ground, and the next she stands towering over Catra, the light within her blinding.

“Leave,” the voices say. “Leave now.”

Catra shakes her head. “No,” and she shakes her head again. She reaches for Adora, hesitating only when Adora makes no move at all to flinch away. “Snap out of it. C’mon. Cut this magic bullshit out. Do you wanna fight? We can fight. Just like old times, right?”

Adora leans in close. The light spilling from her burns bright. “Leave.”

Catra cradles Adora’s face in both hands; knows that she shouldn’t, that Adora would by all accounts slap her hands away, but she leans close. “Adora, please.”

A blank stare — and then a flicker, barely decipherable. “Help,” she says. The voices rush back in and state, “Leave,” once more. She starts to fall to her knees, but Catra falls with her.

“Stop it,” she says. The sword hangs nearly fully formed above their heads. “Snap out of it. You have to snap out of it. Hate me all you want, but you need to stop right now.”

“Leave,” the voices say, but then, through the mass of confusion, Adora’s voice clear and loud: “Help.”

“I’m doing what I can,” Catra says. She sheathes her claws; brushes locks of blood-soaked hair away from Adora’s face. “You need to stop it. You’re the only one that can stop it. You know that.”

Another flicker of light, like the burnt bulbs hanging in the cadet barracks of the Fright Zone. For just a moment she catches the silver of Adora’s eyes, and then the white light again.

“Can’t,” Adora’s voice cuts through the voices now repeating “LEAVE” loud and booming and chanting.

Catra cradles Adora’s face once more and says, “You can.”

The voice chant louder, and louder, deafening. The light within Adora flickers on and off, faster and faster, until she screams, the sound cutting through it all.

The aurora borealis disappears. When Catra glances up the sword fades from existence with the beam of light.

Adora collapses.

Catra sits back on her haunches, catching Adora’s body. She maneuvers Adora until she’s cradling her torso in her arms, able to look down at Adora’s face, at her fluttering eyelashes.

A pale hand brushes Catra’s cheek. “Catra,” breathes Adora. 

“Hey, Adora.”

Adora smiles, her teeth stained red. Her eyes fall shut, and she mumbles, “Tired,” right as she nuzzles her face against the crook of Catra’s shoulder.

Catra’s ears twitch at the thud of a body near her. She looks up; finds Bow kneeling next to them, the skin between his brows pinched as he looks over a now slumbering Adora. Swift Wind follows after him and nudges Adora’s cheek with his muzzle.

“She feels…calm,” says Swift Wind. “She hasn’t for a while.”

“I think falling into a post-magic induced sleep would mellow anyone out,” she replies.

“We should get her back to my dads’ place.” Bow reaches out; tucks a lock of now wheat-blonde hair behind Adora’s ear. “Lift her onto Swift Wind together?”

Catra snorts. “Think we need to like, five of us to carry her around. How is she even more muscular now? What are you guys feeding her?”

Bow laughs. “Fair,” he says. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

  
  
  
  
  


Catra awoke to the sting of a bright, fluorescent light. She blinked, and then squinted. She tried to sit up, only to fall back with the pull of a band around her torso, her hands.

“What the fuck?”

“It’ll be easier if you’re calm,” said Horde Prime. One of his eyes extending on a long, metallic chord away from his face, staring unblinkingly at her as he settled tools onto a metal tray.

“What’ll be easier?” she asked. She struggled in her restraints. “What’s going on?”

“It’s a simple initiation process, Commander.” He turned to smile at her. He held up a small, thin rectangular chip in one hand. “I need to know where you go once you go back home, of course.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this reads like a final chapter but tbh there’s a lot more plot to come 🌝


	5. reconnection

Mara sits in the center of a clearing. She weaves a crown of shimmering white flowers with thin fingers. When Adora steps into the clearing, she smiles even as she continues to concentrate on her creation. 

“Razz taught me how to make this,” she says. She finishes adding another flower; twists another stem and the crown’s complete, held in her hands. She raises it to Adora, smiling. “I made it for you.” 

Adora stares at her. She continues to stand at the very edges of the clearing, a loosely curled fist pressed to her chest. “Where am I?” 

“You’re so close,” answers Mara. She pats the ground beside her. “Come here.” 

Adora hesitates; she swallows, throat dry, and crosses the clearing. It’s not until she settles on the ground that she notices her split knuckles; the dry, flaking blood on her hands and staining her clothes. 

Mara smiles at her, eyes warm and kind. She reaches forward and settles the crown on Adora’s head. “I’m proud of you, you know.” 

Adora doesn’t know what to do with the look on Mara’s face. She doesn’t think she wants to hear the answer to the question so ready on her tongue, but says, regardless, “Why?” 

“You did the right thing. You stopped the weapon. You saved Hope.” She looks to Adora, the smile on her face soft, loving. “I tried and couldn’t. I’m glad you could.” 

“But you saved Etheria,” Adora says. She reaches for Mara’s hand and cradles the calloused palm between her own. “You did what you had to. You’re a hero, Mara. You _are_ ,” she insists as Mara shakes her head. “I was afraid of becoming like you. But you’re braver than anyone I’ve ever met. You’re a hero.” 

Mara gazes back at her with shining eyes. She blinks, then blinks again, before she sighs and tilts her chin up to the sky, her eyes fluttering shut. “I want to rest. I want you to rest. But I’m afraid it’s not over.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“That wasn’t the Heart.” Mara turns to her. A slight frown deepens on her face. “I’m sorry, Adora. You have to find the Heart.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

Mara cradles Adora’s cheek in one hand. “Destroy the Heart.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Catra’s curled up on the floor when Adora wakes. Moonlight streams through the sheer curtains, illuminating the freckles sprinkled over the bridge of her nose, the spot of dry drool on the corner of her mouth. She sleeps with her brows furrowed, as if even in rest she finds nothing but trouble. 

Adora sits up in bed, propped up by her elbows, and stares down at the familiar scene only marked different by the length of Catra’s hair, the fact she sleeps on the floor rather than curled up against Adora. 

She remembers, vaguely, the burn of lights; the way magic spilled forth and the panic unspooling as it unraveled her very being, forging her essence into the sword hanging above her. She remembers Catra’s voice, her touch. She remembers Catra’s face above her own, her eyes softening into the affection that warmed her for her entire life until a fall in the woods, a sword in her dreams. 

The tip of one of Catra’s ears twitches. Her breathing changes, and while it’s clear she’s now awake, she lies still. 

It’s dangerous to wonder if anything has changed; to sit and imagine crossing the space between them, fitting herself to the curve of Catra’s back and matching her breaths until she lulls herself back to sleep. In another world — In another reality, maybe she could. 

She remains where she sits. Catra continues to feign sleep. 

“You should sleep somewhere else,” she says. She turns to her side, back to Catra, and pulls the blankets up to her chin. Hours later, when she wakes again, Catra’s gone. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Her knuckles are bandaged. She flexes her hands; flinches when it pulls at the scabs and blood begins to seep through the white fabric. She sits at one of the kitchen tables, listening as Bow sets a kettle on the stove. He said nothing when he came to her room in the morning, only pressed a kiss to her forehead and walked out the room, leaving the door open for her to follow. She’s still in her gray pajamas, finally changed out of her bloody, sweat soaked clothes. 

A mug clinks onto the surface of the table before her. She looks up and watches as Bow sits across from her. He sips at his tea, cradling his own mug between two palms. The bags beneath his eyes are heavy, dark. 

Her stomach tightens. She sinks into her seat and stares at the steam rising from her untouched tea. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, finally. She runs a thumb over the fabric of her other hand’s bandages, right over the circular red stain. “I know I shouldn’t have run off. I know that. But I thought — I thought I found a way to bring She-Ra back. I thought it’d be easy and that I’d be back before dark, but then — I don’t know what happened.” 

Bow takes one last sip from his mug and settles it down on the table. He leans back in his seat. “Do you remember anything?” 

She shakes her head. “Kind of? Bits and pieces here and there.” She pauses. “I think Catra saved me,” she says, voice thick. She clears her throat; finally reaches for the cooling tea and takes a sip. 

“You were making another sword.” 

“I didn’t know that that was going to happen.” 

Bow looks at her. Sometimes, when he pins his gaze on her, Adora feels unraveled. Like he cracked open her skull, unspooled her brains, picked apart every thought and feeling until he knew her as well as she knows herself. The only person that’s ever known her as well is Catra. 

“I thought...I found directions in the journal. Barely legible. It was so degraded.” She brushes her hair away from her face. She remembers the descent into the research facility; remembers kneeling right on the etching of the sword and breathing the words _For the Honor of Grayskull_. “I thought it was an Etherian temple; not a First Ones’ creation. If that was the case, I should’ve been fine. I should’ve gotten She-Ra back and returned before anyone even noticed I was missing, but instead I — I —” She hid her face in her hands; dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. “That’s how they made the original sword, Bow. They...They didn’t just kill a previous She-Ra. They turned her into the runestone. Well, not her — but more like her essence? Her magical core?” She breathes a shuddering sigh. Her hands fall away from her eyes. Bow stares back at her, eyes wide. “I would’ve died. I almost died.” 

“It’s sealed up,” he says. He reaches across the table and clutches at her hand, tight. “We sealed it shut. No one can enter. Only you and Swift Wind. No one will go back in.” 

Her lower lip trembles. She squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you.” 

“I know,” he says. “You’re okay now. We’re all okay. That’s what matters.” He hesitates. Adora catches the minute shift in expression, the transition from comfort to guilt. Her heart thuds heavy against the hollow of her throat. “We couldn’t find your notes, Adora. Or the journal. Your jacket was...completely shredded. We think — We think that your things were destroyed, too.” His eyes search her face. “I’m sorry. I know how much hope you put into it.” 

“That’s my fault, not yours,” she says. She lets go of his hand. She sits up in her seat; straightens her back, forces her chin up, even as her eyes burn. “I think it’s time to head back to Bright Moon.” 

The skin between Bow’s brows crinkle. “Are you sure?” 

She nods. She hides her trembling hands beneath her thighs. “I can’t keep running.” 

  
  
  
  
  


Catra sits at the open window, hugging a leg to her chest, one foot hanging out. Her eyes are closed, her face tilted up to the warm sunlight. The gray cloak hangs over one shoulder, leaving her sleeveless arm bare. Even from her place at the door Adora tracks the largest puckered white scars, aftermaths of their battles. Though old they’re new to her. New, like the length of her hair. New, like the exhaustion that lingers on her face. New, like the lack of bite to her words. 

She closes the door behind her and then leans against it. “We’re going back to Bright Moon.” 

Catra hums. “I figured. Thought we should’ve taken you there in the first place.” 

“I’m glad you didn’t.” 

She opens her eyes with a sigh. Her head lulls to the side, finally pinning her gaze on Adora. Adora can’t decipher what it means. It smarts — the knowledge that she no longer recognizes every subtle expression that crosses Catra’s face. 

“When are we leaving?” 

“Tomorrow.” 

Catra nods. “Sparkles knows?” 

“Of course.” 

“She’ll be happy to see you,” Catra says. “She missed you, you know.” 

The very tips of Adora’s fingers tingle. _Take care of each other,_ Angella once said. Adora wrings her hands together, careful not to tug at the wounds on her knuckles. “It’s weird knowing that you two get along.” 

“Don’t really know anyone that would be too happy when two of their exes become friends, I guess.”

Adora blinks. “What?” Catra stares back at her, an eyebrow raised, and Adora shakes her head. “Me and Glimmer — It was never like that. It’s never been like that. Why would you think —”

“Why wouldn’t I?” 

“Because it’s never been anyone but you!” Adora pushes herself away from the door. “Are you kidding me? Is that really why you’ve been like this for years?” 

Catra snorts. She looks back out the window, but Adora sees the flush on her cheeks, the claws digging into her leg as she hugs it tighter. “No,” she says. “You know that.” 

“I don’t know anything about you anymore.” 

_“‘Anymore.’_ It’s funny,” she laughs, “I don’t think we ever knew each other at all.” 

Adora stills. She stands in the very center of the guest room. She watches the faint breeze ruffle the short strands of Catra’s hair. Even after years of war, even after the evidence of Catra’s cruelty on her back, Adora remains unable to quiet the pang of hurt and longing that always follows. 

_You know me,_ she almost tells her. _There isn’t a single part of me you haven’t touched._ Instead, she raises her chin; steps forward and says, “I don’t understand, you know.” 

Catra’s ear twitches. She looks over her shoulder, sunlight a halo crowning her. 

“Why did you save me?” 

“You tried to save me.” Catra unfolds herself from her perch at the window; steps inside, all grace and elegance a contrast to the dark bruises beneath her eyes, the fluffy, windswept hair no longer held back by a metallic red mask. “Even after everything I did, you carried me out of the Fright Zone. You reached for me when the portal started to collapse around us. And I —” She pauses. Her eyes are so clear. “I’m tired of being angry.” 

“So, what? You’re just — nice? After all this time?” 

“Adora,” breathes Catra. She sounds so tired. 

“I want to believe you,” she says, desperately. “I want to believe you more than anything. Don’t you get that? Scorpia and Bow and Glimmer — they all trust that you’re on our side, and I want to be there too, but I can’t. I can’t.” 

“But you believed Shadow Weaver?” Catra spits out. She steps close; jabs a clawed finger at the very center of Adora’s chest. “Shadow Weaver comes running with her tail between her legs and despite everything she did to us you just welcome her with open arms. You think I don’t know, Adora? That she’s walking around without guards, with complete freedom?” 

She grips Catra’s wrist and leans in close. “I told Glimmer,” she says, “that we couldn’t trust Shadow Weaver. I told her for months and she never listened to me. I hate her, Catra. I hate her the way I tried to hate you. I trust her less than I trust you.” 

“I’m flattered, really, that you trust me only slightly more than the woman that tortured me my entire life.” 

_“You tried to destroy the world.”_

_“I know!”_ She rips her wrist from Adora’s grip and leans back, cradling it to her chest. Her eyes shine with unshed tears. “I’m trying! I’m trying to do better, okay? I can’t make up for it. But I’m trying to do better. Isn’t that what you fucking wanted?” 

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” 

“Like hell it doesn’t! It always matters. It’s always about you, isn’t it? The Golden Girl. The Favorite. Youngest Force Captain in history, everyone!” 

“Who gives a shit about any of that, Catra? When has that mattered?” 

“Always! It always mattered!” 

“Not to me,” says Adora. She stops herself from reaching out; from pulling Catra close like she’s wanted the whole of her life. If she could tear her torso open and keep her cradled close she would. She would. 

Catra shakes her head. She wipes her eyes with the heel of a palm. 

Adora waits until she meets her eye. “What do you want, Catra?” 

“I don’t know,” she says. 

“No.” Adora closes the space between them. She cups Catra’s face in her hands. “What do you want?” 

Catra stares at her. She looks lost; terrified. Her hands shake as they grip Adora’s wrists. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know.” 

Adora waits. A part of her, the part that still sees the Horde barracks when she thinks of home, needs no reply. 

“I thought — I thought I needed power. I thought I needed you.” She looks at Adora like she never has before, like she no longer craves to hold the hilt of the knife buried in her chest even as she twists the blade. “I’m always going to want you. But I don’t need you.” 

“Are you ever gonna forgive me?” 

“Are you?” 

“I’m going to try.” 

“We’ve hurt each other so much,” Catra says. “Are we even going to be able to —” 

Adora shrugs. “I don’t know.” She presses a kiss to Catra’s forehead. Her hands slide down to Catra’s shoulders. “It’s worth trying, though, right?” 

Catra nods. She touches Adora’s cheek, smoothing the pad of her thumb over one of the three jagged scars splicing the skin. “I loved you, you know.”

“I know,” she says. “I loved you too.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Free us,” the First Ones said. The hands of innumerable spirits pushed at her skull; they shoved and kicked and tore at the very edges of her mind. Knelt on the ground, Adora could do nothing but open her mouth in a silent scream. Light spilled forth from her mouth, her eyes. 

“Free us,” the First Ones said. They peeled back muscle from bone. They untangled neuron from neuron. They scratched at the bones of her body until she heard the crack of breaking nails. 

“Free us,” the First Ones said. “Like Serenia. She helped us. She saved us.” 

Above her, a blue gem began to form. 

  
  
  
  
  


Adora startles awake. Sweat clings the fabric of her shirt to her body. The sheets are soaked with it. She sits up. She presses her hand to her numbing chest. She reminds herself, It passed. She reminds herself, I’m here. 

Her left arms numbs all the way to the tips of her fingers. She watches the sun rise in the hours that follow, cradling the limb all the while. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Bow’s barely dismounted from Swift Wind backs when a familiar voice yells his name. Adora turns to see faint traces of pink glitter disappear from the courtyard’s entrance, and then a pop of light appears below her, tackling Bow to the ground. 

Glimmer, hair longer, forehead adorned with the same crown, scrambles off Bow with a laugh. She offers a hand to him and helps him up. “Sorry! I just — I missed you.” 

A smile lights up Bow’s face. Everything about him softens. He pulls Glimmer into a tight hug, tucking her head beneath his chin. “I missed you too, Glimmer.” 

A loud gag cuts through the moment. Adora turns to see Catra rolling her eyes as she dismounts Swift Wind’s back. 

“Right, well, I’m going to throw myself off the tallest tower after that,” she says, slinging the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. “How’s the dental care for the Rebellion? Gotta make sure any cavities are taken care of.” 

Glimmer snorts as she pulls away from Bow. She bumps a fist against Catra’s shoulder. “Nice to see you too.” 

“Ugh. Yeah. Whatever. Where’s Scorpia?” 

Glimmer raises an eyebrow. “Where else would she be?” 

Catra groans. “I swear, if I find the two of them making out _again_ —” 

“That’d be on you. Let them have some privacy.” 

“You put us in the same room!” 

Bow snorts as he helps Adora off Swift Wind. He smiles when he catches her confused expression. “Yeah. I know.” 

“Who’s Scorpia making out with?” she whispers. 

“I’ll catch you up on all the castle gossip later.” 

She frowns. She’s about to say something else when Glimmer finally turns to her, the grin on her face falling. Adora’s stomach bottoms out. 

“Hey,” says Glimmer. 

Adora nods. “Hey.” 

Glimmer glances between her and Bow. She wrings at the edge of her cape — a new habit. “Can we — Can the three of us talk? After supper?” Weirdest of all, she looks to Catra standing beside her. Glimmer visibly straightens up. She clears her throat. “We have a lot to discuss.” 

Adora frowns. “Yeah,” she says. “War room?” 

Glimmer shakes her head. “We’ll meet at the Chamber of Queens.” At Adora’s answering scowling she nods up at the sky where a large ship hangs closer to the ground than the rest of the fleets. She leans close and whispers, “Compromised.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i literally have never updated this quick before but! hope you enjoyed! i'm absolutely awful at replying to comments and will try to get better at it but please know that i appreciate every one of them


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